Backward Glass (9 page)

Five

The thing about getting shot is that you don’t exactly follow what happens next. It didn’t even register at first that he had shot me.

The gun went off, and I felt a giant’s fist punch me in the side. Luka later told me that she had seen in his eyes that he was about to do it, and tried to push me out of the way. At first I thought the pain in my side was somehow her fault, like she had punched me.

There was shouting above me and another gunshot, all the sounds retreating as though I had slipped into a deep grave. I found myself looking at the concrete floor as a film of milky white curtained my eyes. “But … ” I was trying to say. “But … ” I don’t even know what the rest of that sentence would have been. I started breathing in tiny gasps to minimize the agony building in my side.

I think time must have sped up for me then. I didn’t lose consciousness, but events started happening at a faster pace. There were more bangs and scuffles and shouts. Twice someone tripped over me. Groaning made the pain worse.

Rolling onto my back, I saw the raincoated man with the gun straining to turn it toward me, wresting against John Wald. “Leave off, ye mad fool,” shouted the bearded man. “Tha canst not hold off what’s done.”

“Let me kill him,” said the man with the gun. “Then it all gets better.”

He kneed Wald in the crotch and pushed him as he doubled over. The barrel of the gun strained closer to me. Part of me wanted to close my eyes so I wouldn’t see it coming, but before I could decide, another figure launched itself at the man, more like a jaguar than a person.

Luka.

She grabbed his gun hand and heaved herself up at the shooter. She didn’t speak. She must have been too angry or desperate or scared for that. She just smashed her face toward his.

With his other arm, the man with the gun smashed her against the wall, but when he did, a splatter of blood came with her, and I could see that she’d bitten his cheek in her rage.

The bearded man rose up again, overcoming his pain. My shooter still had his gun, but he looked scared now. Before Wald could grab him, he snarled in frustration and backed into the mirror.

In the midst of my pain and the odd coldness flooding my body, I had a moment to be shocked at this. An adult going into the mirror.

What about the rules?

Strong hands rolled me over. I heard a man’s voice, talking softer now, but I couldn’t understand a word.

I tried to pay attention, but fingers started examining my wound, and I felt like throwing up. I began to tense and buck. The hands withdrew and instead turned me on my side so I could heave the contents of my stomach onto the concrete floor.

I heard Luka’s voice again. “I have to go. That was—he went forward. I have to see if Jimmy and Rick are okay.”

“Wait it,” said the bearded man. “Boil some water and search me out a needle. I’ll go along to aid thy friends, but we must first stitch this wound.”

He probed my side again, and all I could get through the agony were confused impressions. More gibberish talk from the bearded man, impatience from Luka. More pain in my side. Some lost time. Minutes? An hour?

“I have to go,” said Luka’s voice. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I have to go. You have Anthony now. He can help.”

A different voice. Anthony? “I think you should wait for John. What are you going to do against that guy by yoursel
f
?”

“Something.”

More talk. Maybe more time passing.

I was picked up with what might have been gentleness, though I only felt pain. The veil of white that had descended across my vision had begun to thin, so I could see as we turned to the mirror.

“No,” I said feebly. “No, it’s going to—”

Burn was what I thought, but it didn’t. I didn’t see in the mirror who was carrying me, but I saw the glass come toward me. I flinched and felt the chill of downtime travel.

We were going further into the past.

There followed an endless series of bounces and jostles. I could feel the wetness of my blood around the agony of my wound. I could make out the foreign man’s voice, and the boy’s.

If that journey was five minutes, an hour, or a year and a day, I couldn’t have told you. Sometimes we were in light, but mostly not. Where were my parents? Were they going to find out that I was gone? Had those gunshots been loud enough for them to hear in 1977? Would my dad hold my shoulders when they took the bullet out like in the movies?

The giant who was holding me stopped and began to put me down. I tried to speak, but a voice said, “Hush now. Old John Wald’ll stash us sound in the fool’s mucky hiding hole. Hush.”

My dreams were about pain. Spears and knives stuck in my side, usually from behind so I couldn’t get them out. Luka was there, telling me about the bad man from the mirror, and how he wanted to crack my head open, but I kept trying to tell her that we had it wrong, what he really wanted to do was shoot me to stop his wife from dying.

I woke in a muddy hole with dim, grey light leaking in from beneath my feet. I could smell smoke.

I tried to sit and groaned in pain.

“Sounds like our patient is awake,” said a voice from the direction of the grey daylight. A girl’s voice. “Should I get him?”

“Let me,” said a man’s voice. “I must ensearch the stitches for corruption. Hast thy flashlight?”

A moment later, the wild, bearded man from last night folded himself into the entrance of the tiny cave. He shone his flashlight first at me and then into his own face. “’Tis only auld John Wald, a’here to spy thy wound.”

His manner and his warm eyes assured me more than his words. His voice was different from the desperate croak it had been last night.

Unbidden, my hands had moved to protect the wound, but he gently pushed them aside, murmuring strange words and pulling off the woolen blanket I was wrapped in to expose a gauze dressing, only slightly bloody, and smaller than I had imagined.

Under that—I winced as he tugged the gauze away—was a wound smaller than a dime and puckered with ugly black stitches.

A brief examination and he pronounced it clean. Next he looked at my face. I can’t say I wasn’t afraid; my teeth were chattering and my heart pounding, but something about him didn’t look scary. “Thou must have carps?”

“You mean … questions?” I asked.

He nodded. “We hid thee here a night and day again, but now I can bring thee from the deeps.”

He began to help me halfway upright so I could crawl with him from the cave.

The “hiding hole” from which we were crawling was too small to be called a cave. Long and narrow, it seemed to have been excavated by hand, though some care had gone into it as well. I could see bits of broken furniture that had been used to shore up the sides. The ragged man helped me negotiate the tight spaces. Even bowed down in this tight space, he had a kind of rough nobility about him.
Trust John Wald. Kenny says he is the
auby
one.

All of a sudden, I knew this place. “Wait,” I said to the bearded man. I took his flashlight and aimed it at a much-abused tabletop buried in the wall. Some decades in the future, I didn’t know how many, Jimmy Hayes and I had dug this same tabletop out and we all stared at the carved initials in its surface. Some of them were fresh, some old. CB + RH. CH. Clive, Rose, and Curtis. They looked faded and worn, though perhaps not so much as before. And below, where before I had read the initials of Lillian Huff, Anthony Currah, and Margaret Garroway—nothing. Uncarved wood. The bigger surprise, however, came at the bottom of the list. KM and LB. Kenny Maxwell and Luka Branson. Even back in this time, whenever this was, they were not fresh.

We had carved them even further in the past.

But how far in the past was I?

“Fleet now,” said the bearded man. “There’s much to speak ere dark enshrouds us all.”

I returned his flashlight and emerged from the cave mouth into a grey day on the shores of a much stronger Manse Creek. In my time, the hole had been halfway up the creek bank. Here, now, it was five feet of sloping sand from a deeper and wider stream.

Two girls about my age sat by a campfire. They looked up as I came out.

The taller one had bright blond hair in long curls. She wore a heavy wool coat, patched and worn. The other was her opposite in every way. Her dark hair was short, framing a round face that was both soft with plumpness and hard with some inner resolve. She stood and spoke.

“Kenny Maxwell,” she said. “Welcome to 1947. I’m Margaret Garroway. Everyone calls me Peggy. This is Lilly Huff. And I guess you’ve already met John Wald. I know he looks like a rough sort, but he’s okay. He’s from the seventeenth century.”

I straightened painfully, wincing and worrying about my wound. “How do you know who I am?”

Peggy shrugged. “You’ve heard of us, haven’t you? Anthony’s been talking about you for weeks. Isn’t that what we do, talk about the kids further up and down the line?”

S
he put a cigarette to her lips and took a long draw on it. I tried to remember, had we figured out her age? Sixteen? Seventeen? Was she trying to act older, or was that how kids were in 1947?

Lilly looked about the same age, but she wasn’t wearing makeup, and didn’t have the same hard-bitten look. She remained seated, and now indicated a rock by the fire. “You’ve been through a lot. Care for a seat? John has cooked some fish for us. He’s something of an outdoorsman.”

I stood and blinked for a moment. How did they know this John Wald? And here she was talking about Anthony as though everything was fine. Wasn’t he missing? And shouldn’t I talk to Margaret Garroway right now about how she was supposed to go missing?

Lilly smiled, and I shrugged inwardly. They seemed to know what was going on. Best just to listen. Shivering despite the blankets, I sat, and when Lilly handed me some charred fish on a chipped, dirty plate, I wolfed it down.

The others ate as well, and I stayed quiet for a while, listening to them talk. If you didn’t trouble about every word, John Wald became comprehensible. He gestured expressively as he spoke, perhaps used to not being understood.

Lilly complimented John Wald on the fish. Peggy wondered if it was going to rain. At this, John raised an eyebrow and examined the sky before nodding.

“I’ll have to get home before that in any case,” said Lilly.

Peggy tossed her cigarette in the fire. “Not me. Mother’s gone to Auntie Nina’s again and the ogre will be brooding. I could stay out another night if I choose.”

You’re supposed to go missing, I wanted to say. But there was something forbidding and sharp in Peggy’s manner. “Where’s Anthony?” I said at last. I would have much preferred to ask about Luka, but it didn’t seem the time yet.

Peggy shrugged. “Back at home with mumsy and daddy-kins in the fierce familial embrace. Got away from the bad man, don’t you know, thanks to John Wald here.”

I was silent for a long moment, trying to sort it out. I was shot; the pain still throbbed, burning if I shifted or tensed. I was in 1947. This was the thing Luka had been dreaming of for months. I could ask what they knew about the dead baby. I could do what Jimmy had been avoiding for weeks; I could ask about Peggy’s disappearance.

But before any of those questions—and I felt like a
traitor to Luka for acknowledging it, but it was true—before anything like that, came a much greater concern.

“I have to get home,” I blurted. “My parents will be going nuts.”

Lilly opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated.

“Come on, Lil,” said Peggy. “Out with it. Rip the Band-Aid off already. Tell the kid he isn’t going home.”

S
i
x

It took a while to get the full story. Peggy and Lilly kept interrupting each other, and then John Wald had to tell part of it in his half-English gibberish. But between the three of them, they managed over the next half hour or so to tell me everything.

The trouble had started for them just about the way it had for us further into the future, with the disappearance of Anthony Currah.

“It was the man who shot you,” said Peggy, “not that we knew that at the time. He came out of the future as far as we can tell. Seems able to get into the mirror. Caught Anthony alone. Screaming something about you, and being back from Wales of all places. Forced Anthony into the basement and through the mirror. Brought him back to now—1947—and hid him in the little cave. I came home to muddy footprints leading from my mirror and—nothing.” She abruptly stood up, took out a cigarette, and turned her back, walking a few paces away.

“It was a terrible shock for poor Peg,” said Lilly in a lower voice. “To me as well. John had just come through my mirror the night before. I brought John to meet Peg when she came back to my 1937 to tell me about her mysterious footprints. Her parents—well, they’re not as … supervisory, I suppose, as most. John could hide out in the coach house for days, I reasoned. He helped us look. We scoured the countryside for days. Then it got worse. Peg came home to find her house broken into. I’ll bet you can guess the one thing that was stolen.”

“The mirror.”

“Exactly. Ripped from its frame. I think Peg must have been going wild. I was in my time, so apart from John, she was all on her own. No going back to get me.”

“What happened next?”

Peggy turned back toward us and fixed me with a hard but unreadable expression. “Anthony almost died is what happened next. The man made him put a doorstop in the mirror, then tied him up and left, taking the mirror with him.”

“Five days he was gone,” said Lilly. “And Anthony tied up all that time in that little hole. If the rain hadn’t been making it through there, I’m sure he would have died.”

“Five days,” I said. “Looking for me? Wait.” I held up my hands and tried to line the times up in my head. “This started, what, two weeks ago? That’s when Melissa and Keisha got attacked.”

They made me tell them what I knew about those attacks. “But wait,” I said, looking at Lilly. “What about you? What happened when you tried to come through?” I looked back at the hole in the creek bank I had come out of. It wasn’t large, and was mostly hidden by grass and weeds. “If he took the mirror away, where did he put it?”

Lilly opened her mouth to speak, then paused, thought for a moment, and tried it again. “That’s … part of what we need to talk to you about, Kenny. There’s a lot this man doesn’t understand about the mirror, we think, but some things he must understand better than we do.” She looked at my face and shook her head. “Oh, I mustn’t be making any sense at all. It was in water, Kenny. It was sunk in water. I found a doorstop in my mirror. Thinking it must have been left by Peg, I tried to come through, and I almost died. John says he’s seen exactly that happen. You know, of course, that terrible heat or cold you go through when you pass through the place in between. Somehow it’s worse when you pass from the mirror into water. It makes your muscles cramp and tighten. My lungs filled with water and I could barely drag myself back in time to save my life. I kept trying, but I could never go through. Wherever he had taken the mirror, he had sunk it in water.”

“Why do you think he’s looking for you?” said Peggy abruptly, directing a steady gaze at me.

“What?”

“Why is he looking for you?”

Kenny Maxwell killed my wife.
I could still hear the words in my mind. I flicked a glance at John Wald, but he wasn’t entering into this part of the conversation. Could it be he hadn’t heard or hadn’t made out that accusation?

“I don’t know,” I said. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. What if it was true? Killed his wife. What if I deserved what he wanted to do to me? “What happened next?”

Peggy turned away, finding something to look at up a bend in the creek. Lilly took over. “The man came back two days ago. Screaming. He thought Anthony was hiding things, mirror-secrets. He hauled Anthony out of the hole and into the creek where he had the mirror. I think he might have killed him, but Peggy heard.” Lilly gave a little smile. “Our Peg is brave, I think, however much she wants to hide it.”

“Doesn’t take courage to scream and act the fool,” said Peggy, her back still turned to us.

“As soon as he saw her,” said Lilly, “he dropped Anthony and ran for her, started screaming. This man she had never seen before in her life, babbling about how he’d found her at last, he’d save her, never let her go. Is it any wonder, she isn’t thrilled to be talking about it?”

“I’m fine,” said Peggy. She walked back to us but didn’t sit. She ran a hand through her hair. “He kept screaming about how he’d tell me everything and make it right this time.”

At last, as she told it, the man must have realized he was terrifying her. He tried to reassure her that he was only trying to “stop the bad things.” To prove his goodwill, he fished Anthony out of the creek, and the mirror as well. Tying Peggy as well—for her own good, he said—he brought them all back to the carriage house.

“Then came the gun,” said Peggy. “He said it was all to make us happy again. If he could kill Kenny, everything would be peachy keen.”

“He would have done it all, too, if it weren’t for John,” said Lilly, “though it cost him terribly.”

Wald, also out looking for Anthony, returned to the carriage house in time to see the crazy man tying Peggy and Anthony to chairs. Wald attacked and they struggled. In the confusion, Anthony broke free and began to scream. People ran to help, but before they arrived, the crazy man escaped into the mirror.

“How could he do that?” I said. “I thought it was only the mirror kids? I thought it doesn’t let in any one older than sixteen?”

Wald shook his head. “Does not choose.” I frowned, and he rubbed his chin as though choosing his words carefully. “When it chooses the first time, we must be young. And when our year of seven is done, we think the glass is done with us. But ten years on comes another year of the glass. And ten and ten and every ten. If we’re still alive, we’re still the children of the glass.”

“So it depends on what’s his home time,” I said. “Right? You can always go back to the time you’re supposed to be in.” I shook my head to clear away the questions this new rule brought up. “Anyway, that must have been when he came to Anthony’s basement and got me.” I turned to Wald. “But you were there. Breaking into the house. How did you get there? You didn’t come through the mirror.”

Wald gave a huge sigh and a sad, weary grin crossed his face. “The long path, lad. Pray thou never need foot it.”

“He was arrested,” said Peggy. She threw her cigarette butt into the dying fire and stared at the embers. “They were all idiots. Wouldn’t listen to a thing I said. My father and Ben Wilkes from down the street came in to find me tied up and John bleeding from a nasty pistol whipping. I tried explaining, but—well, you know the neighborhood’s reputation. Missing children and the like.”

John nodded, staring into the fire. “I canna blame them,” he said. “A good drubbing I took of it, too. That father of thine, hath a good kick in his foot.”

John told of how he was arrested and charged with assault, breaking and entering, vagrancy, and half a dozen other crimes. Unable to prove his innocence, and carrying only serviceman’s papers from thirty years ago, he didn’t see the light of day until 1948.

“So, wait,” I said. “That’s happening right now? I mean—it just happened, right? How are you here?”

Peggy groaned. “Weren’t you listening? ‘The long path’? John waited. Yes, he’s in jail now, one of him. Awaiting trial. He’ll get out. Wait all the way until 1957 and come to help us. He broke into Anthony’s house last night—in ten years—to catch Prince Harming when he came through the mirror. If you had let him in instead of running, he could have helped you sooner. Gave us a shock when we saw him, I’ll tell you that for nothing, ten years older in a day.”

He smiled ruefully and nodded.

“So Prince Harming,” I said, “comes out of the mirror to kill me, and that’s when—”

Wald nodded. “Would have been worse if thy Luka had not been there.”

“Did … did she bite his cheek?”

Wald chuckled at that. “A high harpy that one, and fond like gold a’ thee.”

I told them I remembered some of the rest of it. “He escaped. And Luka followed while you stitched me up.”

“Aye,” said Wald. “She could not wait it. She guessed the mad fool had footed up the years to menace thy friends. I called her to stay whilst I stitched thy side, but she’d have none a’ that. Rushed into the glass. Left one a thy doorstop strings that I might after-foot.”

“And?” I looked at the girls.

Peggy looked over at Lilly. “You’re the sweet one, Lil. You tell him.”

“Tell me what?” I said.

Lilly took a deep breath. “It’s the mirror, Kenny. Jimmy’s—in 1967. Prince Harming must have done it when he escaped after shooting you. It’s in water again. He’s thrown it in the lake.”